M talking about money world today. Finess, Oh conversations to say, finess, Finess. We're funess. Howdy, hey, and hello there. Welcome to another episode a Weird Finance, a show where we try to help you feel a little less weird about money, one conversation at a time. I'm your host, pacode leone, and joining me for this week's conversation is the Internet's Rich BF Vivian two. The Internet is a beautiful and wild place. We might even take for granted how much it's changed our lives. In my lifetime alone, I've gone from referencing encyclopedias to having access to the entirety of human history from a tiny computer that I carry around with me everywhere. But in the wise words of Stanley, with great power comes great responsibility. Actually I think it was Peter Parker that said that, or maybe it was Will Tear. But you see the point I'm trying to make here is that it can be hard to sort fact from fiction online. That's one reason why former stockbroker Vivian two took to social media, creating videos to help combat the sea of bad financial advice that we all seem to be swimming in and through this process of making the Internet a safer place for financial advice. The Internet being the wonderful disaster that it is, change Vivian's life. Please enjoy my conversation with Everyone's rich BF. Vivian two. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to us about money. Viv of course, thank you so much for having me. All Right, so I gotta ask, how did you become the Internet's rich BF? Tell us all about it. I wish I had this amazing story for you, but it was very much a happy accident. I started my career on Wall Street and ended up leaving for the greener pastures of tech and media. And when I got there, all of my new colleagues who were like, you're going to rebalance my four own k You're going to help me pick the right health insurance. And I laughed because they were all so very different. There were people who were in their early twenties, there were people who were married with kids, who lived in the suburbs, and they were all asking the same questions. So I said, you guys, too many of you were asking I'm just going to create some content and put it on the Internet. And then you can refer to video seventeen when you have a question. And little did I know more than just my seven coworkers needed this information. And I created my very first video on January first of twenty twenty one, and it went viral, and about a week later I had a one hundred thousand followers and a little bit of an oh no moment, like, how am I going to create enough content to keep up with the demand. Wow, so you've been on a rocketship, is what it sounds like? Yeah, a little bit. Has it been what you thought it would be like? I mean, I guess since it was a happy accident, maybe you never imagined what it would be like to get on the rocketship, But tell me what the journey has been like emotionally, financially, all of the above. Yeah, it's definitely not what I had envisioned or anticipated for my life or my career. That said, I feel really, really fortunate to be able to do what I do. I get to partner with incredible brands like City and these are household names, and by working with them and creating content, I'm able to provide financial education for free for regular people and help people. And I do feel really lucky that that's what I call my day job. In terms of actually creating content, I'm not gonna lie. Before I became a creator myself, I always thought like, so easy, what an easy job? And now that I actually create content, I'm always thinking, Oh, what's the next idea, what's the next thing? Like when am I gonna shoot? When am I going to edit? When am I gonna you know, post? And it is so much more work than I thought. For me to create a sixty second video, it doesn't take me sixty seconds, it can take hours. I'm glad you said that because I've shot videos that are sixty seconds long and there's reshooting involved, there's fumbling on the app, And I was like, well, I guess I'm just dumbass. But what you're saying is even the pros have to put in a lot of time to make them one minute video. Yeah all right, So I want to talk a little bit about your Wall Street days. I'm very intrigued. I want to know, first of all, can we educate the audience and explain exactly what does a Wall Street trader do? What was your day looking like when you were working on Wall Street? Yeah? So this is such a lame thing to say, But Wall Street traders, what they do is really just provide liquidity. So when you want to buy one hundred shares of a stock, you can go onto a brokerage and do that. But when hedge funds want to buy or sell, they're probably trying to transact in millions or tens of millions of shares and dollars, and you can't just log into an app and do that. And the Wall Street traders are the ones executing those trades on their behalf or trading with them, taking the other side of that trade. So my old boss used to say, we are in the moving not the storage business. So we are just essentially trying to get in and out of positions as quickly as possible for our clients. And my average day, I would wake up around five. I would need to be in my seat at five forty five ish, which is quite early, and then I would be reading the news, putting together any sort of like quick one pagers for clients or sharing them with my managers, and then I would say around seven thirty I would go grab breakfast. I'm very much a ham and cheese omelet kind of gal and then you know, nine thirty when the stock market would open, it was very, very busy. And then throughout the day from nine thirty to four you would be trading, and that you would be essentially tied to your seat for the full day. And then after four pm we would do any sort of like recaps or wrap up reports, sharing news with clients, and just going over the day's p and L. But what was awesome about it is every single day was different. You were trading different stocks, you were working for different clients, so there was always something fun and exciting happening. I can't get this vision out of my head, so correct me if I'm wrong. But I'm imagining you like on the floor, you're like picking up the phone. There's six screens in front of you. Is that how it was? Or am I deluding myself? So the six screens is true. I had an H shape, so it was like two screens up and down on the left and right, and then so that's four screens and then two in the middle like next to each other. But people imagine people yelling and screaming with like paper tickets in their hands on the New York Stock Exchange floor, and that's just not how that works anymore. Everything is very digital. I was sitting at a open floor planned desk next to other people who were also trading, and there is yelling, certainly in moments of tension and high stress, but people aren't just yelling all day, So it's not a job to get if you're just like looking for a place to displace your emotions, that's just what you're saying. I hear that. I think it's really fascinating that you were in a male dominated industry. I think it's fascinated that that's still the thing, not that many years ago, and I wanted to ask you, what was your experience being one of the only women on the team. Yeah, I think I was very fortunate because my manager and my mentor were was a Asian woman, so I very much could see myself in her. I could essentially like look into my time machine and say, if I have an amazing career and I do this, I will end up like that. I think it's really hard because these big financial industries are making a push to hire diverse talent, but it's going to take some time. Right, Like, this push to hire this diverse talent means that the folks higher up are still pretty homogeneous, and there are often many many white men in these seats. So if you are a young white man coming into the industry, you have so many people who could be your mentor. Whereas if you are you know, a personal color or a woman or a part of the LGBTQ community, there's certainly few were people who look like you. And that's not to say you can't have a mentor who doesn't identify the way you identify, but it definitely it does introduce challenges that they just may not necessarily have encountered in their own careers. So I think a lot of places are doing a better job to hire diverse talent, but we need to put a focus on retaining that diverse talent as well. All Right, So, when I'm hearing you talk about diversity and I'm hearing you talk about how the higher ups are homogeneous, I've been there. I was the only woman on a on a financial planning team, and the only queer person in the whole office, the only brown person not in an admin roule. So I very much understand what that's like. And when I was in that situation, I felt like all these things were working against me, right, being a woman in a man's world, a queer person person's world. But then when I broke out and started being like the person who's more media facing, right, the person writing the bo the person making the videos, it suddenly became a superpower. Right. All these people were like, oh you, we want to hear from you. And I'm wondering if that experience has been something that you've felt as you've transitioned from traditional Wall Street to more media face. I always say I am not succeeding in spite of the fact that I am a young Asian woman. I succeed because of it. For so long, this industry has largely only catered to one identity. You had to be old, rich, and oftentimes white to be successful or to be considered good with your money. And now suddenly you have someone who doesn't look like your dad's financial advisor, who doesn't look like you know, the suits walking around in Midtown. He was someone who looks like and dresses like and talks like they could very literally be anybody best friend from college. I look like the girl that you go to brunch with. And I think that's disarming. It makes people want to engage because they feel like we are equals, We are on the same level. They don't have to pretend to be someone that they're not with me. I love that you're flipping the script and the thing that was being sold before this fear, the language and jargon somehow that was very much being sold. I think to scare people into products, or to scare people into making them feel like you have to hire me, because I know there's like a whole army of us out there now really flipping the script. And you know, I just want to thank you for your community service with of course, I have to ask what is the most important lesson you learned while working on Wall Street as a traitor. You know, this isn't one that most people would think of, but it's a simple one. It's one that we learn in kindergarten. It's to treat people the way you want to be treated. I had my manager's manager when I first started. He was this very loud, like traditional like Italian New Yorker. He would talk with his hands. He like everybody loved this guy. And he told me one day, he said, viv you always got to buy him the chicken palms. And I'm like, sir, I am lacked, was intolerant, what are you talking about? And he meant that when people do nice things for you. You know, he would sometimes buy them chicken palm for lunch, and he would treat everyone from the janitor, the watery delivery person, the it guy, all the way up to the head of the desk with kindness and respect. And that's why people would bend over backwards for him. When he was having an issue, he would be the first one to get it solved because people would run to help him because he was kind and people liked him. So maybe not necessarily even like a financial lesson, but just this in any sort of workplace setting or even just in your regular life, like, treat people with dignity and respect and they will treat you the same. I love that. It makes me think about how you know, you're in the business of being on social media and those numbers are a currency, right, you have a certain cultural currency, you have a certain social currency. But what I'm hearing from you is one of the most important things in the world is actually understanding that kindness can itself be currency. I'd never really thought about it like that, So thanks for that frame all right, so I read your story, I know that you are like me or a child of immigrants, and I'm curious. I really want to know if you've experienced this. But when I first started working for myself, for like the first six months, I would get a random text from my sweet, adorable, caring mom and it would be something along the lines of how is the job hunt going? And I would have to text my mom back and be like, Mom, I love you, thank you for caring about my safety and my security my future. But I have clients. I'm working for myself. And it wasn't until I was like finally on Good Morning America that my mom was like, oh, okay, it's real. And you went from like a serious job to I'm not saying your job isn't serious, but you know, for the generation above us, especially immigrant parents, how has this been received by your family? Yeah? So, when I left Wall Street and moved into Tech, my parents and I got into such a blow up fight. We didn't talk for like three months. Honestly, it was like crazy. They had essentially thought like, we helped you go to the University of Chicago, we spent all this money in your education, you come out you get this dream job and now you're throwing the dream away. And we thought a lot and it wasn't until they saw me have career success in the tech and media space, make a lot of money, have work life balance, feel really happy, and like have that success that they were like, oh, we get it now. So this go around they were actually really supportive. But I will say I didn't share with them all that was going on with your rich BFF until I was eight months in because I did not want them to kill my idea in its infancy, and I wanted to get it to like almost like a critical mass point so that they couldn't do that. I love that. I appreciate you being so honest about that struggle. Thank you. Fine. So, I don't think it's normal for most people to feel comfortable talking about money, especial personal finances, and especially in a public way that you do. I'm curious where does your ease with talking about money come from, and does it come from your parents or how did you get there? Yeah? I will say culturally, I'm very lucky. My family is Chinese, and in Chinese culture, everyone all the aunties and uncles are like very nosy, so they always want to know, Oh, what did this flat screen TV costs? Like what's your house costs? So I think there was a level of ease that I had growing up that I think a lot of people don't, just because it was culturally ingrained. But my parents were also very adamant savers, and they were also ones that encouraged me to try and practice frugality early on. They were also the ones who taught me that researching the financial products I choose is really important. So, for example, when using a credit card to sign up for I always start with research, and one thing I look for is a card that's going to benefit me the most based on my spending habits, as you know, that's going to maximize my rewards. And right now I'm working with City and the City Double Cash card is amazing. It's a perfect fit for my lifestyle because I don't need to track categories or a my spending. So whether I'm buying furniture or makeup or a teleprompter to create content, I don't need to be tracking what does this fall under. I just know that I'm earning cash back on it. Love that. Love that. So one of the things I think has been really fascinating. Learning about you and learning about your story is something that I think I also came across, and it's this idea, this ironic truth that in the world of finance, just because somebody's worked in finance, and just because they have a high paying job, that doesn't necessarily mean that they actually have good personal finance habits. So I want to know your experience with piecing that whole picture together, and I also want to know why do you think that's the case? Very simply put, because we're human in theory, right, Once you understand the basic principles, you understand how to be good with your money. It's quite simple. But we don't exist in a vacuum. Finance money does not exist in a vacuum. It's very easy to build a budget. It's harder to stick to one. When your friend is calling you saying, Hey, all of us are going to brunch. Are you going to be a square and stay at home? Are you're going to come with us? Even if that brunch may not necessarily fit into your budget, you're going to feel kind of compelled to go. And people who work on Wall Street are no different. Like they also have rent to pay, they have friends they want to hang out with, they have activities they want to do, they have vacations they want to go on, They have goals and dreams and money needs. And so I think when we talk about finance and say, ah, you should just tighten the belt and pull yourself up from your bootstraps, that's unrealistic because we are still regular people living in now twenty twenty three, and we need to think about our money holistically, because this is not some crash diet that you can just be good at once and be done. This is a true mindset shift to know that your relationship with money is an ongoing thing. I have to ask, because you left that little breadcrumb as an example, do you have good advice for when your friends are saying, don't be a square, come out to brunch. How would you navigate that? Yeah? I get this question a lot because I have a lot of young BFFs, and I think honesty is the best policy and offering an alternative. Your friends invite you, guys, you go out to a brunch, and you know that the brunch is going to be somewhere between fifty to seventy five dollars per person. You can suggest an alternative and say, I would love to go to brunch, however, it's not in my budget right now. However, I would love to have everybody over and each person brings one brunch dish. One person will bring the bacon, one person will bring the French to host, one person will bring, you know, the pancakes. One person will bring eggs. I know eggs are expensive right now, but you know, I think it's easy to offer up an alternative that is one much more low cost and within your budget. And that alternative shows your friends that it's not that you don't want to hang out with them, it's that you truly want to stay within your financial comfort zone. And true friends are going to respect that. Love it. And again, because you're so comfortable talking about money, Clearly I love talking about money, and not everybody is there yet. Do you have any advice for anyone who's who's struggling, who's trying to cross that divide of I don't talk about money with anyone, and now I just want to casually drop, hey, that's not in my budget. How can they make those steps towards progress? Definitely, I think you got to ease into it. It's not something where you can wake up one day and like ask your friend, like, what is your net worth? Like that that's not a great idea, but you can ask things that lead to that. Certainly, maybe it starts with questions like how much money do you think you would need to quit your job and walk away from it? All that gives you an understanding of their values. That gives you an understanding of what they consider to be their walk away number, their FU number. It gives you a lot of things about their financial picture, and then you can introduce more questions like, hey, I am trying to negotiate a raise, like this is what I currently make? You offer up your vulnerability first, would you be willing to share what you make? You've now offered something and they can come back to you, and then you know, you can ease into kind of like phase three, which is what is your net worth? Tell me? Show me your Spreadshe show's Reggie. Yeah, amazing. So I know that one of the big reasons why you started posting videos, in addition to wanting to educate your colleagues, was because you started seeing a lot of super sketchy financial advice going around, especially during the pandemic, and you wanted to combat that, and I want to help our listeners out. I want you to give us some examples of some of the worst pieces of financial advice that you've seen on TikTok, Instagram, the Internet as a whole. There are so many different pieces of bad advice, but they all essentially boil down to one thing. They either do you know, one of two things. One they tell you to put all of your money into one thing. I'm so sorry. There is not one perfect investment, certainly not. Your money should be in a diversified portfolio of investments. So if anyone is lauding one investment is the end all, bey all, this will make you rich. This is amazing, Like it's a no. So you know, I just don't recommend putting all of your money in any one place, frankly. And then two is honestly a lot of scams these days. If it sounds too good to be true, it likely is. And unfortunately, right now, especially as people are, you know, feeling their pockets tighten a little bit, they're going to feel a little bit more desperate and a lot of these scammers are preying on that. So I just really recommend people one practice Internet safety, Do not give away any personal information to someone you don't know, and too, you know, being skeptical. Being skeptical is a good thing discernment, right, Yeah, I appreciate the overarching idea of having a diversified portfolio because that could look like a lot of different things, right. It could look like like there's a lot of real estate bros who are like, take out a loan and then buy a house, and then take out a bigger loan on or a helock an equity line on that house, and keep buying a house. And they want you to be overlevered. They want you to be in harghly invested in real estate. And yeah, it's it's a dangerous game out there. It reminds me of this anecdote that I've heard, and I think it will help people with their discernment as well. Is you should never ask a barber if you need a haircut, right. You need to understand other people's incentives, and if they're giving you information, you need to understand how are they making money off of it? You know what I mean? Like that's a really good kind of follow the money and understand what's incentivizing people. Well, I really appreciate the way that you view the world. I really appreciate the nuggets of advice that you've given us here today. But before I let you go, I want to hit you with some rapid fire questions. So my first, my first rapid fire question is is there anything you've purchased that you know, to the naked eye might seem frivolous or ridiculous, but for you, it was money that was really well spent. Yeah. When I worked on Wall Street, my first big Girl purchase was a black Saffiano leather Proda bag and it was the most money at it I'd ever spend on anything. I think it was like three thousand dollars at the time. And it one could seem like quite a frivolous purchase, because you know, imagine buying a luxury bag at twenty three, twenty four and thinking that was a good purchase, But it reminded me that it was essentially a daily reminder that I earned it, that I can work hard, I can make my own money. I can buy myself this bag. I don't need to rely on anybody else, And I was able to do it with my smarts, my hard work, and I budgeted for it. I saved for it. I created a sinking fund for it, and it was a daily reminder that I could do anything as long as I had a plan and stuck to it. Beautiful. What's one piece of advice, that financial or otherwise, that you'd give to your younger self. Yeah, I would say you have to ask otherwise you're not going to get closed mouths do not get fed. So certainly asking for a raise and a promotion every single year at work, what's the worst thing that happens? They say, No, you need to be asking for more money because you are going to be performing at a level above yours. And so if you know that the rate of inflation is what six seven percent right now, and they're giving you an inflation raise of two percent, you've made less money than you did last year. You need to be asking for a raise every single year. Do you have any tactical advice around that. I've heard someone say, keep a spreadsheet of all the projects you're working on and how that adds value to the company's bottom line, and that can be kind of your backup and help you make your arguments as to why you should get a raise. Do you have anything else to add to something like that. I've got the digital version for you. So you can create a folder in your in box called promo, pitch or raisor seats or your brag book whatever, And any time someone sends an email that is like, you are amazing, you saved the company, you created a million dollars an extra revenue, anything amazing happens, just forward it to that folder. And then at your midyear review or your end of year review, all you gotta do is go into that folder and look at all the amazing things you did. And that way you actually have a quantifiable list of how you contributed and what you are worth. Beautiful. All right, do you have any financial superstitions that you had growing up that you'd like to share with us today? So my mom used to get on me about this all the time. I don't know about you, but like when I sit and I'm like just like chilling and like not thinking, I might jiggle my leg a little bit. And in Chinese culture there's a superstition that if you jiggle your leg, you're like jiggling the money out, like the wealth away. Wow, I've never heard that. Yeah, you know, my grandmother on my father's side. Her father was Chinese, and she would get mad when I jiggled my leg, but she would never give me any backup as to why. I just thought I was annoying her, but could be that. Certainly love it. Thank you for sharing that all right. Last one for you. Do you have any financial fumbles that you can now look back on and laugh at? Yeah? Definitely. In my early twenties, I would say I was spending money on things that I didn't care about to impress people that I didn't like it very much. Was you know, instagramification instead of keeping up with the Joneses like we're now trying to keep up with the Kardashians, And so it very much about like I needed to have this designer bracelet and this bag and go on this vacation, when in reality, maybe I didn't even want to go there, or maybe I didn't even like how that bracelet looked. So I think now at the end of my twenties, I'm very much thinking more about does this bring me value? Does this bring me joy? And is this going to add to my life? And was it worth the amount of time I had to work to pay for it. I love that framework well, Viv. I gotta say you dropped some really great nuggets in this short conversation. I appreciate you coming on here and taking time out of your busy day to chat with us. Before I let you go, will you let the listeners know where to find follow and fangirl out with you. Of course, you can find me across social media as your rich BFF, as well as at your rich bf dot com. Amazing. Thank you so much, Viv, of course, thank you. Hey there, kiddo. How's that new freelance gig going? Hi, Grandma, that's going great. I'm finally making money doing what I love. That's delightful to hear. But don't forget. You now your own boss, and that means you have to save for taxes. What do you mean, Well, when you work for someone else, your employer takes care of paying taxes for you. But when you're self employed, you have to pay your own taxes. It's called self employment tax. I've been so excited about my new gig that I even think about that. I'm glad we had a chance to talk about how important it is to set aside some money each month to cover your tax bill. That way, you won't be cut off God when tax time rolls around. Okay, I'll make sure to do that. Thanks for advice, Grandma. Now I know, and knowing is half the battle. Weird Finance, We're Finess. This is Stockwatch with Paco de Leone, a former financial planner, and Amanda Holden and X finance bro and current investment educator. Over the course of a year, we're going to monitor the stock portfolios of three investors. There's Hank, a terrier mix that looks honestly like a coyote or perhaps the newest Wolf of Wall Street. There's Hugo, a black and white cat living in a world full of color, but hopefully not in the red. And last there's a human baby. Each will invest in a total of fifty thousand dollars across five different stock picks, and we're going to monitor all three portfolios. In the end, there can only be one winner of Stockwatch, and every six weeks or so we'll update you on the competition and teach you about investing along the way. This is st Welcome to the first episode, the first edition of this segment called Stockwatch. I'm Pocodolion. I'm here with Amanda Holden, aka the Dumpster Doggie. Let me first of all, just explain what the hell we're doing during this segment. I want all of you to learn about investing via our wonderful educator, Amanda Holden. And the way that I want us all to learn about investing is by observing a stock competition. So I have assembled three investors, a dog, a cat, and a human baby. Here's how they picked their stocks. I found a website where you can randomly generate a stock just by pushing a button. So I've taken a treat and I've put it across the room. We let the animal get it, and I push the button until the animal gets the treat. That's how they picked their stocks. For the baby, I had a baby take a little ball and throw it down a flight of stairs, and as soon as the ball left the baby's hand, I clicked that stock generator and when the ball stopped, That's how the baby picked the stock. There's also one thing I just want to clarify. We're not actually investing real dollars here. We're running a simulation. So I'm going to log in right now. We've uploaded these as of yesterday, so the competition has just started, it's fifty thousand dollars any sort of I try to get the numbers as close to ten thousand dollars each. If we fell short for any of the securities, because sometimes you can't, you know, perfectly buy ten thousand dollars worth of stock, I just put it in cash, so a couple each portfolio has a couple of bucks in cash. But as of right of this moment, the baby is in the lead. The baby has fifty eight hundred and forty dollars. The cat is actually I'm so sorry, I just gave you wrong information. The cat just pulled up in the lead. Hugo. The cat is at fifty one in three hundred and fifteen dollars and sixty one cents. The human baby is at fifty eight forty sixty four and sadly, Henry the dog is at forty nine, four hundred, twenty two dollars and ninety five cents. So that's basically where we're at. Every six weeks or so, every time I have Lovely dumpster Doggy Amanda Holden to come check in with us. We're going to update you on the competition, and in the meantime, what I want to do is. I want to hand it over to Amanda, and I want her to answer this larger question, which is why do we need to invest? Thank you so much, Poco, Why don't we start here? So in this world, there are really two ways to make money. You can really boil it down to one of two ways. The first is through exchanging our time for money, and I'm guessing we're all pretty familiar with this methodology of making money, right, that's a paycheck. The second way is figuring out how to have our money make us money, Right, like mama's tired, Let's get the money to do a little bit of the heavy lifting around here. And that's what investing is. And if we ever want to get to a point where we are no longer exchanging our time for money, we had better figure out a way to have our money make us money. And so we do this by buying things called assets, that's just another word for investments, which tend to increase in value over time, as opposed to something something like your couch, which, especially after the wear and tear of the pandemic, is definitely decreasing in value over time. Because most of us aren't going to invest just for funzies. We are investing to build towards financial independence, Paco, Is that why you invest? Yeah, of course I don't want to work forever, and I feel like at some point society is going to say you can sit down now. We don't want your opinion. Absolutely many of us don't want to work forever, nor will we even have the option to be able to do so. And I know very much that we don't like the word retirement, especially I think as millennials, but really anybody in the workforce understandably. But I also think that most people would agree that we don't want to leave our vulnerable future selves without the resources they will need to keep the heat on and to eat delicious food, or maybe even have some really wild years in our golden age, right, golden Girl's gone wild. I very much like to think of my future self as I call her, my bad granny, because I am going to be traveling around Europe, maybe in France, eating baguettes, drinking wine with my significantly younger lover. That's my plan. You don't have to be a granny, you don't have to be bad, but we do want to get in the practice of thinking about our future selves. And we are going to take care of that person. And I am guessing that most listeners live in the US, and unfortunately, here we have far too little social safety net for our elderly and I really wish it weren't that way. But what that means for many of us, like you just said, Poco, is walking away from work or leaving work, requires we have enough money saved or really invested to be able to walk away from work. Retirement is not going to be served up to us on a platter at age sixty five. Retirement is not an age, It's an amount of money saved. And Poco. Next, can we talk for a minute more specifically about what we gain from investing? Yeah, let's do it. So even the word returns, I think it helps to clarify what that means returns. When we're talking about returns that you get from an investment, that means your profit, your gains. And in this game, we're talking about the stock mark get And by the way, the stock market is just a marketplace for stocks, which are these teening, tiny little slivers of ownership in companies. There's shares of ownership in a company. And when we take the average performance, the average profitt the average returns of all stocks. This includes the stinkers, this includes the bad years. US stocks have increased in value at a rate of about ten percent per year. That's the average. Now let me shift us really quickly for a minute, Paco financially speaking, right now, what would you say is at the top of everyone's mind, like, what's going on out there in the real world that's got everybody worried. Definitely inflation. Inflation, Things getting more expensive over time. And our recent numbers are showing that prices are increasing at a rate about six percent per year. It was even a little bit more last year. And this in general is much higher than average. The average historically is three percent per year. So things getting more expensive at a rate of about three percent per year. What this also means is any cash you hold that's not earning any rate of return is losing out by that much as well. It's losing value at a rate of about three percent per year. And so back to the investing. If you are investing and earning a ten percent rate of return and inflation is at three percent or even at six percent, what's happening here? You are growing your wealth faster than inflation, above and beyond inflation, right, like you're not just keeping up but hopefully adding real new money to your bank accounts. Now, of course it's not a guarantee, especially if you're treating or investing strategy like it's a drunken stroll through the casino. But luckily, there are simple and strategic ways to invest in such a way that you can return right, you can make, you can earn whatever is the average moving forward. And basically that's what we're gonna do here. Every six weeks or so, Amanda is going to come on and we're gonna check in on the cat, the dog, the human baby, and Amanda's going to drop a new lesson so that we're all a little bit less scared and more excited and ready to dive in when it comes to taking our money to grow more money. So thank you so much, Amanda, Thank you for having me Paco. Until next time, this has been Stockwatch with Paco de Leone and Amanda Holden. If you'd like to learn more about investing, well you're in luck. Amanda wants to show you that investing isn't just for Wall Street bros And dusty old dudes. She has a super fun and comprehensive course that's gonna leave you feeling completely confident in your ability to build wealth and navigate this overly complicated investing world with all of its terminology. Claim your financial freedom and power. Sign up for her investment education course Invested Development Today. Head over to Amanda Dashholden dot com and click on course, or you can just follow her on Instagram at dumpster dot Doggie, Send her a DM and she'll get you all set up. Of course, I'll also link to the course and everything else in the show notes until next time. Somehow in the way, here we are at the end of another episode of Weird Finance, which is an iHeartMedia production and just would not be possible without the help of many wonderful, caring, talented and hardworking individuals like my producer, Ramsey Youngs. Ramsey produced, edited, he did some sound design, and even sang a little bit. Thank you to Henry Hugo and a human baby for helping us with Stockwatch, a stock competition that was featured as this week's segment, and a big beautiful thank you to Amanda Holden for teaching us all about investing. To learn more from Amanda to check out her course invested Development. Thank you to my friends Camille Kane and Wisconsin John for lending their voices for this week's PS Day. Our theme song was written and performed by me and my dear, dear, sweet wonderful friends, Jenna Parker and Andrew Parker. If you have any comments, do you want to ask me a question about money, you have suggestions, or if you want to be part of the show, give us a call at eight three three asked Paco. That's eight three three two seven five seven two two six, or you to send us an email at Weird Finance Pod at gmail dot com. All right, folks, well that's it. I'll catch you here next week, and in the meantime, please take care of

M talking about money world today. Finess, Oh conversations to say, finess, Finess. We're funess. Howdy, hey, and hello there. Welcome to another episode a Weird Finance, a show where we try to help you feel a little less weird about money, one conversation at a time. I'm your host, pacode leone, and joining me for this week's conversation is the Internet's Rich BF Vivian two. The Internet is a beautiful and wild place. We might even take for granted how much it's changed our lives. In my lifetime alone, I've gone from referencing encyclopedias to having access to the entirety of human history from a tiny computer that I carry around with me everywhere. But in the wise words of Stanley, with great power comes great responsibility. Actually I think it was Peter Parker that said that, or maybe it was Will Tear. But you see the point I'm trying to make here is that it can be hard to sort fact from fiction online. That's one reason why former stockbroker Vivian two took to social media, creating videos to help combat the sea of bad financial advice that we all seem to be swimming in and through this process of making the Internet a safer place for financial advice. The Internet being the wonderful disaster that it is, change Vivian's life. Please enjoy my conversation with Everyone's rich BF. Vivian two. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to us about money. Viv of course, thank you so much for having me. All Right, so I gotta ask, how did you become the Internet's rich BF? Tell us all about it. I wish I had this amazing story for you, but it was very much a happy accident. I started my career on Wall Street and ended up leaving for the greener pastures of tech and media. And when I got there, all of my new colleagues who were like, you're going to rebalance my four own k You're going to help me pick the right health insurance. And I laughed because they were all so very different. There were people who were in their early twenties, there were people who were married with kids, who lived in the suburbs, and they were all asking the same questions. So I said, you guys, too many of you were asking I'm just going to create some content and put it on the Internet. And then you can refer to video seventeen when you have a question. And little did I know more than just my seven coworkers needed this information. And I created my very first video on January first of twenty twenty one, and it went viral, and about a week later I had a one hundred thousand followers and a little bit of an oh no moment, like, how am I going to create enough content to keep up with the demand. Wow, so you've been on a rocketship, is what it sounds like? Yeah, a little bit. Has it been what you thought it would be like? I mean, I guess since it was a happy accident, maybe you never imagined what it would be like to get on the rocketship, But tell me what the journey has been like emotionally, financially, all of the above. Yeah, it's definitely not what I had envisioned or anticipated for my life or my career. That said, I feel really, really fortunate to be able to do what I do. I get to partner with incredible brands like City and these are household names, and by working with them and creating content, I'm able to provide financial education for free for regular people and help people. And I do feel really lucky that that's what I call my day job. In terms of actually creating content, I'm not gonna lie. Before I became a creator myself, I always thought like, so easy, what an easy job? And now that I actually create content, I'm always thinking, Oh, what's the next idea, what's the next thing? Like when am I gonna shoot? When am I going to edit? When am I gonna you know, post? And it is so much more work than I thought. For me to create a sixty second video, it doesn't take me sixty seconds, it can take hours. I'm glad you said that because I've shot videos that are sixty seconds long and there's reshooting involved, there's fumbling on the app, And I was like, well, I guess I'm just dumbass. But what you're saying is even the pros have to put in a lot of time to make them one minute video. Yeah all right, So I want to talk a little bit about your Wall Street days. I'm very intrigued. I want to know, first of all, can we educate the audience and explain exactly what does a Wall Street trader do? What was your day looking like when you were working on Wall Street? Yeah? So this is such a lame thing to say, But Wall Street traders, what they do is really just provide liquidity. So when you want to buy one hundred shares of a stock, you can go onto a brokerage and do that. But when hedge funds want to buy or sell, they're probably trying to transact in millions or tens of millions of shares and dollars, and you can't just log into an app and do that. And the Wall Street traders are the ones executing those trades on their behalf or trading with them, taking the other side of that trade. So my old boss used to say, we are in the moving not the storage business. So we are just essentially trying to get in and out of positions as quickly as possible for our clients. And my average day, I would wake up around five. I would need to be in my seat at five forty five ish, which is quite early, and then I would be reading the news, putting together any sort of like quick one pagers for clients or sharing them with my managers, and then I would say around seven thirty I would go grab breakfast. I'm very much a ham and cheese omelet kind of gal and then you know, nine thirty when the stock market would open, it was very, very busy. And then throughout the day from nine thirty to four you would be trading, and that you would be essentially tied to your seat for the full day. And then after four pm we would do any sort of like recaps or wrap up reports, sharing news with clients, and just going over the day's p and L. But what was awesome about it is every single day was different. You were trading different stocks, you were working for different clients, so there was always something fun and exciting happening. I can't get this vision out of my head, so correct me if I'm wrong. But I'm imagining you like on the floor, you're like picking up the phone. There's six screens in front of you. Is that how it was? Or am I deluding myself? So the six screens is true. I had an H shape, so it was like two screens up and down on the left and right, and then so that's four screens and then two in the middle like next to each other. But people imagine people yelling and screaming with like paper tickets in their hands on the New York Stock Exchange floor, and that's just not how that works anymore. Everything is very digital. I was sitting at a open floor planned desk next to other people who were also trading, and there is yelling, certainly in moments of tension and high stress, but people aren't just yelling all day, So it's not a job to get if you're just like looking for a place to displace your emotions, that's just what you're saying. I hear that. I think it's really fascinating that you were in a male dominated industry. I think it's fascinated that that's still the thing, not that many years ago, and I wanted to ask you, what was your experience being one of the only women on the team. Yeah, I think I was very fortunate because my manager and my mentor were was a Asian woman, so I very much could see myself in her. I could essentially like look into my time machine and say, if I have an amazing career and I do this, I will end up like that. I think it's really hard because these big financial industries are making a push to hire diverse talent, but it's going to take some time. Right, Like, this push to hire this diverse talent means that the folks higher up are still pretty homogeneous, and there are often many many white men in these seats. So if you are a young white man coming into the industry, you have so many people who could be your mentor. Whereas if you are you know, a personal color or a woman or a part of the LGBTQ community, there's certainly few were people who look like you. And that's not to say you can't have a mentor who doesn't identify the way you identify, but it definitely it does introduce challenges that they just may not necessarily have encountered in their own careers. So I think a lot of places are doing a better job to hire diverse talent, but we need to put a focus on retaining that diverse talent as well. All Right, So, when I'm hearing you talk about diversity and I'm hearing you talk about how the higher ups are homogeneous, I've been there. I was the only woman on a on a financial planning team, and the only queer person in the whole office, the only brown person not in an admin roule. So I very much understand what that's like. And when I was in that situation, I felt like all these things were working against me, right, being a woman in a man's world, a queer person person's world. But then when I broke out and started being like the person who's more media facing, right, the person writing the bo the person making the videos, it suddenly became a superpower. Right. All these people were like, oh you, we want to hear from you. And I'm wondering if that experience has been something that you've felt as you've transitioned from traditional Wall Street to more media face. I always say I am not succeeding in spite of the fact that I am a young Asian woman. I succeed because of it. For so long, this industry has largely only catered to one identity. You had to be old, rich, and oftentimes white to be successful or to be considered good with your money. And now suddenly you have someone who doesn't look like your dad's financial advisor, who doesn't look like you know, the suits walking around in Midtown. He was someone who looks like and dresses like and talks like they could very literally be anybody best friend from college. I look like the girl that you go to brunch with. And I think that's disarming. It makes people want to engage because they feel like we are equals, We are on the same level. They don't have to pretend to be someone that they're not with me. I love that you're flipping the script and the thing that was being sold before this fear, the language and jargon somehow that was very much being sold. I think to scare people into products, or to scare people into making them feel like you have to hire me, because I know there's like a whole army of us out there now really flipping the script. And you know, I just want to thank you for your community service with of course, I have to ask what is the most important lesson you learned while working on Wall Street as a traitor. You know, this isn't one that most people would think of, but it's a simple one. It's one that we learn in kindergarten. It's to treat people the way you want to be treated. I had my manager's manager when I first started. He was this very loud, like traditional like Italian New Yorker. He would talk with his hands. He like everybody loved this guy. And he told me one day, he said, viv you always got to buy him the chicken palms. And I'm like, sir, I am lacked, was intolerant, what are you talking about? And he meant that when people do nice things for you. You know, he would sometimes buy them chicken palm for lunch, and he would treat everyone from the janitor, the watery delivery person, the it guy, all the way up to the head of the desk with kindness and respect. And that's why people would bend over backwards for him. When he was having an issue, he would be the first one to get it solved because people would run to help him because he was kind and people liked him. So maybe not necessarily even like a financial lesson, but just this in any sort of workplace setting or even just in your regular life, like, treat people with dignity and respect and they will treat you the same. I love that. It makes me think about how you know, you're in the business of being on social media and those numbers are a currency, right, you have a certain cultural currency, you have a certain social currency. But what I'm hearing from you is one of the most important things in the world is actually understanding that kindness can itself be currency. I'd never really thought about it like that, So thanks for that frame all right, so I read your story, I know that you are like me or a child of immigrants, and I'm curious. I really want to know if you've experienced this. But when I first started working for myself, for like the first six months, I would get a random text from my sweet, adorable, caring mom and it would be something along the lines of how is the job hunt going? And I would have to text my mom back and be like, Mom, I love you, thank you for caring about my safety and my security my future. But I have clients. I'm working for myself. And it wasn't until I was like finally on Good Morning America that my mom was like, oh, okay, it's real. And you went from like a serious job to I'm not saying your job isn't serious, but you know, for the generation above us, especially immigrant parents, how has this been received by your family? Yeah? So, when I left Wall Street and moved into Tech, my parents and I got into such a blow up fight. We didn't talk for like three months. Honestly, it was like crazy. They had essentially thought like, we helped you go to the University of Chicago, we spent all this money in your education, you come out you get this dream job and now you're throwing the dream away. And we thought a lot and it wasn't until they saw me have career success in the tech and media space, make a lot of money, have work life balance, feel really happy, and like have that success that they were like, oh, we get it now. So this go around they were actually really supportive. But I will say I didn't share with them all that was going on with your rich BFF until I was eight months in because I did not want them to kill my idea in its infancy, and I wanted to get it to like almost like a critical mass point so that they couldn't do that. I love that. I appreciate you being so honest about that struggle. Thank you. Fine. So, I don't think it's normal for most people to feel comfortable talking about money, especial personal finances, and especially in a public way that you do. I'm curious where does your ease with talking about money come from, and does it come from your parents or how did you get there? Yeah? I will say culturally, I'm very lucky. My family is Chinese, and in Chinese culture, everyone all the aunties and uncles are like very nosy, so they always want to know, Oh, what did this flat screen TV costs? Like what's your house costs? So I think there was a level of ease that I had growing up that I think a lot of people don't, just because it was culturally ingrained. But my parents were also very adamant savers, and they were also ones that encouraged me to try and practice frugality early on. They were also the ones who taught me that researching the financial products I choose is really important. So, for example, when using a credit card to sign up for I always start with research, and one thing I look for is a card that's going to benefit me the most based on my spending habits, as you know, that's going to maximize my rewards. And right now I'm working with City and the City Double Cash card is amazing. It's a perfect fit for my lifestyle because I don't need to track categories or a my spending. So whether I'm buying furniture or makeup or a teleprompter to create content, I don't need to be tracking what does this fall under. I just know that I'm earning cash back on it. Love that. Love that. So one of the things I think has been really fascinating. Learning about you and learning about your story is something that I think I also came across, and it's this idea, this ironic truth that in the world of finance, just because somebody's worked in finance, and just because they have a high paying job, that doesn't necessarily mean that they actually have good personal finance habits. So I want to know your experience with piecing that whole picture together, and I also want to know why do you think that's the case? Very simply put, because we're human in theory, right, Once you understand the basic principles, you understand how to be good with your money. It's quite simple. But we don't exist in a vacuum. Finance money does not exist in a vacuum. It's very easy to build a budget. It's harder to stick to one. When your friend is calling you saying, Hey, all of us are going to brunch. Are you going to be a square and stay at home? Are you're going to come with us? Even if that brunch may not necessarily fit into your budget, you're going to feel kind of compelled to go. And people who work on Wall Street are no different. Like they also have rent to pay, they have friends they want to hang out with, they have activities they want to do, they have vacations they want to go on, They have goals and dreams and money needs. And so I think when we talk about finance and say, ah, you should just tighten the belt and pull yourself up from your bootstraps, that's unrealistic because we are still regular people living in now twenty twenty three, and we need to think about our money holistically, because this is not some crash diet that you can just be good at once and be done. This is a true mindset shift to know that your relationship with money is an ongoing thing. I have to ask, because you left that little breadcrumb as an example, do you have good advice for when your friends are saying, don't be a square, come out to brunch. How would you navigate that? Yeah? I get this question a lot because I have a lot of young BFFs, and I think honesty is the best policy and offering an alternative. Your friends invite you, guys, you go out to a brunch, and you know that the brunch is going to be somewhere between fifty to seventy five dollars per person. You can suggest an alternative and say, I would love to go to brunch, however, it's not in my budget right now. However, I would love to have everybody over and each person brings one brunch dish. One person will bring the bacon, one person will bring the French to host, one person will bring, you know, the pancakes. One person will bring eggs. I know eggs are expensive right now, but you know, I think it's easy to offer up an alternative that is one much more low cost and within your budget. And that alternative shows your friends that it's not that you don't want to hang out with them, it's that you truly want to stay within your financial comfort zone. And true friends are going to respect that. Love it. And again, because you're so comfortable talking about money, Clearly I love talking about money, and not everybody is there yet. Do you have any advice for anyone who's who's struggling, who's trying to cross that divide of I don't talk about money with anyone, and now I just want to casually drop, hey, that's not in my budget. How can they make those steps towards progress? Definitely, I think you got to ease into it. It's not something where you can wake up one day and like ask your friend, like, what is your net worth? Like that that's not a great idea, but you can ask things that lead to that. Certainly, maybe it starts with questions like how much money do you think you would need to quit your job and walk away from it? All that gives you an understanding of their values. That gives you an understanding of what they consider to be their walk away number, their FU number. It gives you a lot of things about their financial picture, and then you can introduce more questions like, hey, I am trying to negotiate a raise, like this is what I currently make? You offer up your vulnerability first, would you be willing to share what you make? You've now offered something and they can come back to you, and then you know, you can ease into kind of like phase three, which is what is your net worth? Tell me? Show me your Spreadshe show's Reggie. Yeah, amazing. So I know that one of the big reasons why you started posting videos, in addition to wanting to educate your colleagues, was because you started seeing a lot of super sketchy financial advice going around, especially during the pandemic, and you wanted to combat that, and I want to help our listeners out. I want you to give us some examples of some of the worst pieces of financial advice that you've seen on TikTok, Instagram, the Internet as a whole. There are so many different pieces of bad advice, but they all essentially boil down to one thing. They either do you know, one of two things. One they tell you to put all of your money into one thing. I'm so sorry. There is not one perfect investment, certainly not. Your money should be in a diversified portfolio of investments. So if anyone is lauding one investment is the end all, bey all, this will make you rich. This is amazing, Like it's a no. So you know, I just don't recommend putting all of your money in any one place, frankly. And then two is honestly a lot of scams these days. If it sounds too good to be true, it likely is. And unfortunately, right now, especially as people are, you know, feeling their pockets tighten a little bit, they're going to feel a little bit more desperate and a lot of these scammers are preying on that. So I just really recommend people one practice Internet safety, Do not give away any personal information to someone you don't know, and too, you know, being skeptical. Being skeptical is a good thing discernment, right, Yeah, I appreciate the overarching idea of having a diversified portfolio because that could look like a lot of different things, right. It could look like like there's a lot of real estate bros who are like, take out a loan and then buy a house, and then take out a bigger loan on or a helock an equity line on that house, and keep buying a house. And they want you to be overlevered. They want you to be in harghly invested in real estate. And yeah, it's it's a dangerous game out there. It reminds me of this anecdote that I've heard, and I think it will help people with their discernment as well. Is you should never ask a barber if you need a haircut, right. You need to understand other people's incentives, and if they're giving you information, you need to understand how are they making money off of it? You know what I mean? Like that's a really good kind of follow the money and understand what's incentivizing people. Well, I really appreciate the way that you view the world. I really appreciate the nuggets of advice that you've given us here today. But before I let you go, I want to hit you with some rapid fire questions. So my first, my first rapid fire question is is there anything you've purchased that you know, to the naked eye might seem frivolous or ridiculous, but for you, it was money that was really well spent. Yeah. When I worked on Wall Street, my first big Girl purchase was a black Saffiano leather Proda bag and it was the most money at it I'd ever spend on anything. I think it was like three thousand dollars at the time. And it one could seem like quite a frivolous purchase, because you know, imagine buying a luxury bag at twenty three, twenty four and thinking that was a good purchase, But it reminded me that it was essentially a daily reminder that I earned it, that I can work hard, I can make my own money. I can buy myself this bag. I don't need to rely on anybody else, And I was able to do it with my smarts, my hard work, and I budgeted for it. I saved for it. I created a sinking fund for it, and it was a daily reminder that I could do anything as long as I had a plan and stuck to it. Beautiful. What's one piece of advice, that financial or otherwise, that you'd give to your younger self. Yeah, I would say you have to ask otherwise you're not going to get closed mouths do not get fed. So certainly asking for a raise and a promotion every single year at work, what's the worst thing that happens? They say, No, you need to be asking for more money because you are going to be performing at a level above yours. And so if you know that the rate of inflation is what six seven percent right now, and they're giving you an inflation raise of two percent, you've made less money than you did last year. You need to be asking for a raise every single year. Do you have any tactical advice around that. I've heard someone say, keep a spreadsheet of all the projects you're working on and how that adds value to the company's bottom line, and that can be kind of your backup and help you make your arguments as to why you should get a raise. Do you have anything else to add to something like that. I've got the digital version for you. So you can create a folder in your in box called promo, pitch or raisor seats or your brag book whatever, And any time someone sends an email that is like, you are amazing, you saved the company, you created a million dollars an extra revenue, anything amazing happens, just forward it to that folder. And then at your midyear review or your end of year review, all you gotta do is go into that folder and look at all the amazing things you did. And that way you actually have a quantifiable list of how you contributed and what you are worth. Beautiful. All right, do you have any financial superstitions that you had growing up that you'd like to share with us today? So my mom used to get on me about this all the time. I don't know about you, but like when I sit and I'm like just like chilling and like not thinking, I might jiggle my leg a little bit. And in Chinese culture there's a superstition that if you jiggle your leg, you're like jiggling the money out, like the wealth away. Wow, I've never heard that. Yeah, you know, my grandmother on my father's side. Her father was Chinese, and she would get mad when I jiggled my leg, but she would never give me any backup as to why. I just thought I was annoying her, but could be that. Certainly love it. Thank you for sharing that all right. Last one for you. Do you have any financial fumbles that you can now look back on and laugh at? Yeah? Definitely. In my early twenties, I would say I was spending money on things that I didn't care about to impress people that I didn't like it very much. Was you know, instagramification instead of keeping up with the Joneses like we're now trying to keep up with the Kardashians, And so it very much about like I needed to have this designer bracelet and this bag and go on this vacation, when in reality, maybe I didn't even want to go there, or maybe I didn't even like how that bracelet looked. So I think now at the end of my twenties, I'm very much thinking more about does this bring me value? Does this bring me joy? And is this going to add to my life? And was it worth the amount of time I had to work to pay for it. I love that framework well, Viv. I gotta say you dropped some really great nuggets in this short conversation. I appreciate you coming on here and taking time out of your busy day to chat with us. Before I let you go, will you let the listeners know where to find follow and fangirl out with you. Of course, you can find me across social media as your rich BFF, as well as at your rich bf dot com. Amazing. Thank you so much, Viv, of course, thank you. Hey there, kiddo. How's that new freelance gig going? Hi, Grandma, that's going great. I'm finally making money doing what I love. That's delightful to hear. But don't forget. You now your own boss, and that means you have to save for taxes. What do you mean, Well, when you work for someone else, your employer takes care of paying taxes for you. But when you're self employed, you have to pay your own taxes. It's called self employment tax. I've been so excited about my new gig that I even think about that. I'm glad we had a chance to talk about how important it is to set aside some money each month to cover your tax bill. That way, you won't be cut off God when tax time rolls around. Okay, I'll make sure to do that. Thanks for advice, Grandma. Now I know, and knowing is half the battle. Weird Finance, We're Finess. This is Stockwatch with Paco de Leone, a former financial planner, and Amanda Holden and X finance bro and current investment educator. Over the course of a year, we're going to monitor the stock portfolios of three investors. There's Hank, a terrier mix that looks honestly like a coyote or perhaps the newest Wolf of Wall Street. There's Hugo, a black and white cat living in a world full of color, but hopefully not in the red. And last there's a human baby. Each will invest in a total of fifty thousand dollars across five different stock picks, and we're going to monitor all three portfolios. In the end, there can only be one winner of Stockwatch, and every six weeks or so we'll update you on the competition and teach you about investing along the way. This is st Welcome to the first episode, the first edition of this segment called Stockwatch. I'm Pocodolion. I'm here with Amanda Holden, aka the Dumpster Doggie. Let me first of all, just explain what the hell we're doing during this segment. I want all of you to learn about investing via our wonderful educator, Amanda Holden. And the way that I want us all to learn about investing is by observing a stock competition. So I have assembled three investors, a dog, a cat, and a human baby. Here's how they picked their stocks. I found a website where you can randomly generate a stock just by pushing a button. So I've taken a treat and I've put it across the room. We let the animal get it, and I push the button until the animal gets the treat. That's how they picked their stocks. For the baby, I had a baby take a little ball and throw it down a flight of stairs, and as soon as the ball left the baby's hand, I clicked that stock generator and when the ball stopped, That's how the baby picked the stock. There's also one thing I just want to clarify. We're not actually investing real dollars here. We're running a simulation. So I'm going to log in right now. We've uploaded these as of yesterday, so the competition has just started, it's fifty thousand dollars any sort of I try to get the numbers as close to ten thousand dollars each. If we fell short for any of the securities, because sometimes you can't, you know, perfectly buy ten thousand dollars worth of stock, I just put it in cash, so a couple each portfolio has a couple of bucks in cash. But as of right of this moment, the baby is in the lead. The baby has fifty eight hundred and forty dollars. The cat is actually I'm so sorry, I just gave you wrong information. The cat just pulled up in the lead. Hugo. The cat is at fifty one in three hundred and fifteen dollars and sixty one cents. The human baby is at fifty eight forty sixty four and sadly, Henry the dog is at forty nine, four hundred, twenty two dollars and ninety five cents. So that's basically where we're at. Every six weeks or so, every time I have Lovely dumpster Doggy Amanda Holden to come check in with us. We're going to update you on the competition, and in the meantime, what I want to do is. I want to hand it over to Amanda, and I want her to answer this larger question, which is why do we need to invest? Thank you so much, Poco, Why don't we start here? So in this world, there are really two ways to make money. You can really boil it down to one of two ways. The first is through exchanging our time for money, and I'm guessing we're all pretty familiar with this methodology of making money, right, that's a paycheck. The second way is figuring out how to have our money make us money, Right, like mama's tired, Let's get the money to do a little bit of the heavy lifting around here. And that's what investing is. And if we ever want to get to a point where we are no longer exchanging our time for money, we had better figure out a way to have our money make us money. And so we do this by buying things called assets, that's just another word for investments, which tend to increase in value over time, as opposed to something something like your couch, which, especially after the wear and tear of the pandemic, is definitely decreasing in value over time. Because most of us aren't going to invest just for funzies. We are investing to build towards financial independence, Paco, Is that why you invest? Yeah, of course I don't want to work forever, and I feel like at some point society is going to say you can sit down now. We don't want your opinion. Absolutely many of us don't want to work forever, nor will we even have the option to be able to do so. And I know very much that we don't like the word retirement, especially I think as millennials, but really anybody in the workforce understandably. But I also think that most people would agree that we don't want to leave our vulnerable future selves without the resources they will need to keep the heat on and to eat delicious food, or maybe even have some really wild years in our golden age, right, golden Girl's gone wild. I very much like to think of my future self as I call her, my bad granny, because I am going to be traveling around Europe, maybe in France, eating baguettes, drinking wine with my significantly younger lover. That's my plan. You don't have to be a granny, you don't have to be bad, but we do want to get in the practice of thinking about our future selves. And we are going to take care of that person. And I am guessing that most listeners live in the US, and unfortunately, here we have far too little social safety net for our elderly and I really wish it weren't that way. But what that means for many of us, like you just said, Poco, is walking away from work or leaving work, requires we have enough money saved or really invested to be able to walk away from work. Retirement is not going to be served up to us on a platter at age sixty five. Retirement is not an age, It's an amount of money saved. And Poco. Next, can we talk for a minute more specifically about what we gain from investing? Yeah, let's do it. So even the word returns, I think it helps to clarify what that means returns. When we're talking about returns that you get from an investment, that means your profit, your gains. And in this game, we're talking about the stock mark get And by the way, the stock market is just a marketplace for stocks, which are these teening, tiny little slivers of ownership in companies. There's shares of ownership in a company. And when we take the average performance, the average profitt the average returns of all stocks. This includes the stinkers, this includes the bad years. US stocks have increased in value at a rate of about ten percent per year. That's the average. Now let me shift us really quickly for a minute, Paco financially speaking, right now, what would you say is at the top of everyone's mind, like, what's going on out there in the real world that's got everybody worried. Definitely inflation. Inflation, Things getting more expensive over time. And our recent numbers are showing that prices are increasing at a rate about six percent per year. It was even a little bit more last year. And this in general is much higher than average. The average historically is three percent per year. So things getting more expensive at a rate of about three percent per year. What this also means is any cash you hold that's not earning any rate of return is losing out by that much as well. It's losing value at a rate of about three percent per year. And so back to the investing. If you are investing and earning a ten percent rate of return and inflation is at three percent or even at six percent, what's happening here? You are growing your wealth faster than inflation, above and beyond inflation, right, like you're not just keeping up but hopefully adding real new money to your bank accounts. Now, of course it's not a guarantee, especially if you're treating or investing strategy like it's a drunken stroll through the casino. But luckily, there are simple and strategic ways to invest in such a way that you can return right, you can make, you can earn whatever is the average moving forward. And basically that's what we're gonna do here. Every six weeks or so, Amanda is going to come on and we're gonna check in on the cat, the dog, the human baby, and Amanda's going to drop a new lesson so that we're all a little bit less scared and more excited and ready to dive in when it comes to taking our money to grow more money. So thank you so much, Amanda, Thank you for having me Paco. Until next time, this has been Stockwatch with Paco de Leone and Amanda Holden. If you'd like to learn more about investing, well you're in luck. Amanda wants to show you that investing isn't just for Wall Street bros And dusty old dudes. She has a super fun and comprehensive course that's gonna leave you feeling completely confident in your ability to build wealth and navigate this overly complicated investing world with all of its terminology. Claim your financial freedom and power. Sign up for her investment education course Invested Development Today. Head over to Amanda Dashholden dot com and click on course, or you can just follow her on Instagram at dumpster dot Doggie, Send her a DM and she'll get you all set up. Of course, I'll also link to the course and everything else in the show notes until next time. Somehow in the way, here we are at the end of another episode of Weird Finance, which is an iHeartMedia production and just would not be possible without the help of many wonderful, caring, talented and hardworking individuals like my producer, Ramsey Youngs. Ramsey produced, edited, he did some sound design, and even sang a little bit. Thank you to Henry Hugo and a human baby for helping us with Stockwatch, a stock competition that was featured as this week's segment, and a big beautiful thank you to Amanda Holden for teaching us all about investing. To learn more from Amanda to check out her course invested Development. Thank you to my friends Camille Kane and Wisconsin John for lending their voices for this week's PS Day. Our theme song was written and performed by me and my dear, dear, sweet wonderful friends, Jenna Parker and Andrew Parker. If you have any comments, do you want to ask me a question about money, you have suggestions, or if you want to be part of the show, give us a call at eight three three asked Paco. That's eight three three two seven five seven two two six, or you to send us an email at Weird Finance Pod at gmail dot com. All right, folks, well that's it. I'll catch you here next week, and in the meantime, please take care of